A journal of self-discovery, healing, growth, and growing pains.

Posts tagged with "Dan"

My throat has devel­oped some­thing of a raspy tinge from talk­ing all week­end. I’ve never had par­tic­u­larly strong vocal chords. I told myself I’d speak as lit­tle as pos­si­ble today; we’ll see how long that lasts. Maybe I can drink some honey tea instead.

It wasn’t so much that I over­booked myself as plans going on for much longer than expected. Which pretty much means I didn’t get any work done, so I won’t be going to Toronto next week­end so I can catch up. Not that I really want to any­more, as the last two days have left me feel­ing over­stim­u­lated and sat­is­fied. Anyway, Dan took a quick look at my chart for this month (on his own ini­tia­tive) and told me not to do any­thing big on the 15th and 16th because it’s “risky”. I never let my horo­scope deter­mine what I do, but maybe this is the way the uni­verse tells me to stay home.

I didn’t even have time to do my weekly gro­cery shop­ping. I’m eat­ing stale bread and canned soups today.

The best part of the week­end was hav­ing an excuse to use the Numi Dancing Leaves teabuds and teapot that Louise bought me last Christmas, some­thing I’d been sav­ing for spe­cial occa­sions. Amazingly, I got three full steeps — which trans­lates into six cups — out of one Golden Jasmine bud.

Those things I had been try­ing to for­get got lost some­where in the before I even real­ized it. Isn’t that what for­get­ting is about?

Sometimes I need these week­ends. They recharge me, they give me hope, when hope is so fleeting.

An hour before arriv­ing, he calls me, excited, to let me know that he’s run­ning late. He explains that he got caught up in the cal­cu­la­tions for my natal chart. Out of the hun­dreds of read­ings he’s done, both per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally, he hasn’t seen a chart like mine. It’s described as a bun­dle, where all ten plan­ets are con­tained within 1/3 of the 360° chart. This means that my energy is con­cen­trated, focused, self-driven.

The read­ing takes four hours of cal­cu­la­tions and prepa­ra­tion, with an hour-and-a-half ses­sion of thor­ough expla­na­tion. After help­ing him with his new com­puter last month, a triv­ial favour for me but a big one to him and his fam­ily, he offered a read­ing in return. I hap­pily accepted, never being one to dis­miss such a unique offer. He swore me to secrecy because he’s retired, and will only do this ser­vice as a spe­cial favour.

Before he begins explain­ing though, he tells me that I can take the infor­ma­tion he gives me for what it’s worth. He doesn’t tell for­tunes, he sim­ply sees pat­terns in the num­bers. It’s up to us, our per­son­al­ity, our deci­sions, to deter­mine our fate. “Character is des­tiny”, he says.

I can­not describe this man.

There’s too much to him. Too many facets, too deep a per­son­al­ity. He’s a book unto him­self. I could explain as much as I could about him, and one would still have no idea what to expect when meet­ing him. Even today, he sur­prises me every time I see him. I tell peo­ple that he’s a stay-at-home dad, an ath­lete, a writer, an astrol­o­gist, but I haven’t really described him at all.

The chart offers a sub­tle glimpse. The stokes are wide, large, and deep with con­vic­tion. It’s a mix of cur­sive and print­ing, a gen­eral insight­ing into his flex­i­bil­ity. His notes are messy, cor­rected. He prides him­self on being accu­rate, not vague like the far­ci­cal daily horo­scopes, and it’s for this rea­son that I start to believe him. There are things that he describes to me — my penchent for revenge, my philo­soph­i­cal pur­suits, my affin­ity for cer­tain sports — that slowly bring my ever-present, skep­ti­cal guard down. He says that I have a nat­ural cre­ativ­ity, that I’m visu­ally artis­tic, that I see colours dif­fer­ently from other peo­ple. Because of this, he encour­ages me to start mak­ing money off my art within the next 15 years, or I’ll have missed a good oppor­tu­nity. Sometimes it goes over my head; the posi­tions of my plan­ets, my houses, my sagit­tar­ius ascen­dant. He goes into so much detail about my career, romance, sports, travel, and friends that I can’t begin to list it all.

Although there are a few points of inac­cu­racy, I have trust in what he tells me. Ceasar said “men will­ingly believe what they wish”, and per­haps I’m sim­ply one of these men. So will this change me? Will I act on these new insights and become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Will I dis­card them, and end up with the same fate? Maybe it’s wrong alto­gether, some sooth­ing snake-oil, although I don’t think this is true for rea­sons I can’t explain. It’s too soon for me to tell just yet.

All I know is that I’d like to be like this man. I’d like to be as com­plex, as inde­scrib­able as he is.

I spent the greater half of Saturday prac­tice try­ing to unlearn what I got used to with the 38mm ball. I’m prob­a­bly not going to use that size ball any­more, for fear that it’ll fuck up my game.

Yesterday I was able to play Dan for the first time, who hap­pens to be the best player at the club with good rea­son. He was the leader in the city ama­teur divi­sions at one point, and has won leagues, tour­na­ments, money prizes, even coach­ing vic­to­ries. The best part of play­ing him is his atti­tude. As far as I can tell, he’s the only per­son there aside from me, play­ing for fun. Everyone else is either play­ing to keep in shape or to win. It’s funny to go against these young cocky guys who get angry when they miss a shot.

Dan is able adapt his style to his oppo­nent dur­ing ral­lies; for me he’ll go defen­sive and let me smash the whole time (which is my favourite part), though he doesn’t loop return as much as the pros. He’s amaz­ing at return­ing too…he’ll be backed up against the wall about twelve feet from the table, arc the ball ten feet in the air, and it’ll still land on my side. He even adds a crazy amount of side-spin to throw me off. It usu­ally takes about a dozen kill shots to actu­ally win the point against him, and since I go all out when I smash, I’m wasted after five min­utes of ral­ly­ing with him.